This is the primary for the Republican Senate race, and Chris McDaniels is the “too crazy even for Mississippi” teabagger candidate. The numbers are (or were) very, very close and now they’ll be a runoff:

The Hinds County Sheriff’s Department is investigating why three people, including a high-ranking Chris McDaniel campaign official, were found locked in the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson hours after an election official says the building was closed early Wednesday morning.

Hinds County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Othor Cain said investigators are trying to figure out how Janis Lane, Scott Brewster and Rob Chambers entered the courthouse. They were inside until about 3:45 a.m., Cain said.

Brewster is a former coordinator of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s Mississippi operation and is currently McDaniel’s campaign coalition coordinator.

“There are conflicting stories from the three of them, which began to raise the red flag, and we’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” Cain said. “No official charges have been filed at this point, but we don’t know where the investigation will lead us.”

[...] McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch issued a statement late Wednesday saying the campaign “sent people to the Hinds courthouse to obtain the outstanding numbers and observe the count.” The statement reiterated the people were allowed in by “uniformed personnel” and then being locked inside.

“Predictably, a close Cochran ally wants to make hay out of this. Sadly, the Cochran campaign wants to make this election about anything but issues. Mississippians deserve better than this sort of distraction politics,” Fritsch said in the statement.

Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell said, “It is astonishing that the same people who are up to their eyeballs in four felons breaking into a nursing home are also up to their eyeballs in potentially breaking in somewhere else again.”

“And this time they can’t deny that a paid staffer is involved,” Russell said. “At some point you got to say enough is enough. How many more arrests of allies and McDaniel team members before we can say this has gone too far?”